Leave Something in the Account!

If I understand your budget plan, we're supposed to allocate every dollar toward something. If we did that, it would leave our account balance at zero. What do you do if your bank requires you to maintain a minimum balance in your account and charges you a service fee if you don't?

Kristina

Dear Kristina,

I think you misunderstood my plan. When doing a monthly budget, you should allocate every single dollar of monthly income, not every dollar in your account.

Your monthly budget should be based on income minus outgo. You always want to have a balance of some kind in your accounts. Otherwise, you'll end up paying a visit to the land of bounced checks, kiddo. And that's not fun for anyone except the bank, because they'll charge you for the trip!